Chris Van Tulleken

Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food ... and Why Can't We Stop?

Ultra-Processed People

Will Dawson

In the past few decades, the replacement of traditional food with UPF has happened at a nearly unimaginable pace in terms of our evolutionary history. This is concerning because, in the hierarchy of biological life's activities, eating (along with reproduction) is right at the very top. Almost everything else we all do is in the service of these projects.

It's not food. It's an industrially produced edible substance.

Laura Dobie

Certainly, the traffic lights, the nutrition data tables, the HFSS designation all seem to represent a delusion about the way people choose and eat food. It's not just that no normal person can understand the information mixed in among the manufacturers' claims. The delusion is the idea that we can eat according to numbers rather than appetite.

The author goes on to make the case for the ongoing production of synthetic fat: 

‘Heavy workers cannot take in enough calories unless a fair proportion of them is in the form of fat ... This is especially important for those working the long shifts of modern industry without a rest pause for a full meal. The increase of fat consumption in all industrial countries during the last 100 years is, therefore, not a matter of taste only but a necessity of modern life, so I think it a good thing to continue research on synthetic fat.’ 

Here is the inexorable logic of all industrial food: to reduce the time workers require for a meal. I think about this every time I see a lunch-break meal deal. UPF crisps, UPF fizzy pop, UPF sandwich.

The model emphasises that powerful signals inside and outside the body influence food intake and energy balance far, far below the level of consciousness, involving slippery related ideas like salience, wanting, motivation and reward. We smear a conscious layer over all this, but eating is far less of a choice than it appears. 

This is one of the many reasons why simple advice like 'Eat less and move more!' is ineffective for sustained weight loss. It's as crazy as saying 'Drink less water!' to someone who's feeling thirsty.

Almost 90 per cent of hospital tooth extractions among children younger than five are due to preventable tooth decay, and tooth extraction is the most common hospital procedure in children aged six to ten.' The most common operation we do in children - ahead of fixing bones broken on trampolines, hernia repairs and appendix removals - is for rotten teeth. The statistics in the USA are even worse.

If we are active, our bodies compensate by using less energy on other things, so that our overall energy expenditure stays the same.

Pontzer's model posits that going for a long walk or run results in simply scaling back on routine non-essential bodily processes, reducing the amount of energy spent on your immune, endocrine, reproductive and stress systems. That may sound bad, but a bit of downtime actually seems to help to restore those systems to a healthier level of function.

'Some ultra-processed foods mnay activate the brain reward system in a way that is similar to what happens when people use drugs like alcohol, or even nicotine or morphine.’

This neuroscience is persuasive, if still in its early stages. There is a growing body of brain-scan data showing that energy-dense, hyperpalatable food (ultra-processed but probably also something a really good chef might be able to make) can stimulate changes in many of the same brain circuits and structures affected by addictive drugs.

Meals took on a uniformity: everything seemed similar, regardless of whether it was sweet or savoury. I was never hungry, but I was also never satisfied. The food developed an uncanny aspect, like a doll that looks just the wrong degree of realistic and ends up seeming corpselike.

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